Sales guide: The canny clothes shopper's route to a bargain How the beat the stores at the bargains game

IF IT'S a Prada biker jacket (for her) you're after, or a Dolce & Gabbana coat (for him) and you weren't prepared to take out a small mortgage to invest in one the minute it hit the rails in the first place, the sales could be the place for you.

That spending on fashion is hardly booming is no revelation. While the misfortunes of Marks & Spencer have been trumpeted ad infinitum, the rest of the British high street is thinking up ever more imaginative ways to boost turnover, which can only be described - as it has been for some time now - as invariably flat.

Designer clothing, equally, is hardly flying out of the stores. On the contrary, more than a few big names had already started their sales before Christmas. All of this, in the short term at least, can only be good news for the consumer. The spring/summer collections will be coming to a store near you this January. There'll be no shortage of itsy-bitsy bikinis come the cold snap, fashionably - read insanely - enough.

In the meantime, the prices of more costly autumn/winter clothing - there's rather more to producing a heavy wool jacket, for example, than a slither- of-silk sarong skirt - are being slashed to make way.

A word of warning: it's always safer to go for more classic items - ones that won't have metamorphosed into a fashion faux pas by the time you're seen wearing them. The season's must-haves have usually all been spoken for even before the clothes have come into the stores at full price.

It's that waiting-list thing again. The modishly minded knew what they wanted well before the humble likes of you and me. By the time the sales start, any such fashion moments will be thin on the ground.

Similarly, the most experienced - and determined - sales shoppers will have done their homework in advance, earmarking the exact sales items they're looking for, at the most reasonable price, and having committed to memory exactly which part of each store to go to ensure they get just what they bargained for.

Less aggressive shoppers may well simply find themselves stranded in a sea of tired millennium partywear - bright orange, probably - they'd be well advised to avoid like the proverbial plague.

And therein lies the key. If you come across rails of one particular item, and one particular item in one particular colour especially, in the sales, chances are they haven't sold by now for a very good reason. However much the price of such things has been slashed, however tempting it might be to buy into even the greatest of status labels at unfeasibly low prices, every designer makes mistakes and such items were, almost invariably, not worth having in the first place.

The best things to head for when sales shopping are the staples that most designers now include in their collections and which carry through from season to season with only the slightest adaptation to keep them up to date. The trusty Ballantyne cashmere sweater is just one example, the MaxMara coat and Helmut Lang windcheater two more. With these, and other items that have by now become hardy perennials, the sales shopper can't go wrong.

And finally, if you've never been prepared to line up for the opening of the Harrods sale before, this year's guest celebrity might just be worth the wait. Yes, on 5 January the thoroughly gorgeous, ever-pouting Raquel Welch will be doing the honours at the world's largest - and most famously ferocious - sale. Start queuing now - even if you haven't the heart to make it actually through the doors, we trust you'll agree.